DISCONTINUED: Council of Science Editors Book Club discussion

Overall, how are people feeling about the book? Love it? Hate it? Lukewarm? What's your favorite part? Do you wish something had been done differently?

Thus far, I think my main gripe is lack of visual aids for all these molecular structures. I feel like this might be best served by a mini docu-series rather than a book so we can see the author doing all this investigation and engage with the materials through more than the written word (is it too meta then to wonder how the meaning of the content would change once divorced of the material it's presented on? Ha!)

I also wonder if we might have lost sight of the thesis statement a little bit - I expected more direct comparison to how handmade goods differ from machine-produced ones and the ineffable qualities that get lost between them or some such. But perhaps that's my misinterpretation.

Even so, there's some great quotes and thought provoking comments scattered throughout. And it certainly makes me think of materials in a different light, so mission accomplished there!

Hi all, I finally finished Handmade a few weeks ago (it was a very busy fall) and thought I'd post a few thoughts.

I had higher hopes for this book but ended up a bit disappointed. I was hoping for a bit more technical background on the materials and why they work the way they do for the associated crafts, though there was some of that in there to be fair. And I agree that some more diagrams would have been nice (and maybe other visuals such as photos).

It was an interesting read, and definitely not boring. It was more of a personal memoir as seen through her professional life. I don't think I've read anything else quite like it. So it gets a qualified thumbs up from me, I guess.

I'm not sure I'll be participating in the next book (I have others lined up) but I hope you all like it. Happy Holidays to all!